Robin Hood Explained

If you've been following politics lately, you may have noticed that the political campaign for the President of the United States of America has devolved into name-calling. The current President has called his opponent "Romney Hood", and the response has been that this is "Obamaloney".

Leaving that aside, there's a huge error here, and I want to take a moment to correct the record on Robin Hood.

The presidential race is a dirty, negative affair, and I don't want to see a celebrated figure like Robin Hood tarnished. For some background on this, Obama said that Romeny's policy was to raise taxes on lower income earners to offset the lowering of taxes on higher income earners. This taking from the poor and giving to the rich, Obama said, was "Robin Hood in reverse" ergo, "Romeny Hood". Let's leave the politics out of it and focus on Robin Hood.

Robin Hood didn't take money from the rich people and give the money to the poor people. That's not what happened at all.

Does anyone remember who Robin Hood's enemy was? It wasn't rich landowners, or nobles, it was The Sheriff of Nottingham. The Sheriff, as the official agent of the government, was levying extreme taxes on the people of Nottingham in order to enrich himself and expand his power. Robin Hood repeatedly fought the Sheriff's men (i.e. government tax collectors) and he stole the tax money, then gave it back to the people who were taxed so highly to begin with.

Robin Hood didn't steal private property from the rich landowners to give to the poor; he stole tax money from the government and gave it back the poor people who couldn't afford to be taxed that much.

I just wanted to clear that up for our President, since he appears to be a little fuzzy on the whole Robin Hood story.